December 7, 2009

One thin September soon
A floating continent disappears
In midnight sun
Vapors rise as
Fever settles on an acid sea

... Gore wrote [the poem]... because his editor nixed his request to include a separate chapter on the impacts of climate change. After all, Our Choice is supposed to be about solutions... Undeterred by his editor’s ruling, Gore re-imagined his impacts chapter in poetic form.

The images Gore conjures in his (untitled) poem turn a neat trick: they are visually specific and emotionally arresting even as they are scientifically accurate.

Snow glides from the mountain
Ice fathers floods for a season
A hard rain comes quickly
Then dirt is parched
Kindling is placed in the forest
For the lightning’s celebration

... [T]he final lines of Gore’s poem certainly apply to the governments that will gather in Copenhagen from December 7 to 18 for what is regarded as humanity’s last chance to avert absolutely catastrophic climate change.

The shepherd cries
The hour of choosing has arrived
Here are your tools

Is Gore himself that shepherd? No matter. What counts is that the hour of choosing has indeed arrived and, as documented in Our Choice, we do have the tools to survive—if we choose to employ them.

117 comments:

I used to cross the street to avoid "Repent! The End is Near!" crazy-ass buskers on street corners in London. One day I woke up to find that they have Oscars and Nobel Prizes and nearly became the leader of the free world.

The Shepherd is the UN Global Governance. All shall be sheep before a United World Armed Force sent by the UN Security Counsel to impose its will on a renegade section of the North American Province. The only question is when Gore with Pelossi and Obama's actions will request help from the UN to subdue the rebellious Provence that insists on continuing to CO2 poison the World's atmosphere without making massive Danegeld payments.

Surely some revelation is at hand;Surely the Second Coming is at hand.The Second Coming! Hardly are those words outWhen a vast image out of Spiritus MundiTroubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desertA shape with lion body and the head of a man,A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,Is moving its slow thighs, while all about itReel shadows of the indignant desert birds.The darkness drops again; but now I knowThat twenty centuries of stony sleepWere vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,Slouches towards Copenhagen to be born?

One thin Tennessee evening nowAn inner-tube on enclosed swimming pool disappearsOn sprawling ground lit at midnight like the sunAnger rises asPeople figure out I’m using 20x more power than the average American family.Fever never settlesI am that I am

Speaking as an English major, one quality of many good poems that this one lacks is ambiguity. Gore is so dead-certain of his propagandistic vision, it robs the reader of any role in the experience. Fanatics are rarely good poets after the point they become fanatics (i.e. Ezra Pound.)

Vanity Fair has a legacy of publishing some of the best authors of its era, at least in its first incarnation. For anyone there to call Gore's poem anything but doggerel is sad. Embrace his book, embrace his message if you must (and clearly they must -- this is a cheap date review if there ever was one.) But don't encourage him to publish more poems. If one of his "scientifically accurate" poems ever winds up in the New Yorker, then as far as I'm concerned, the earth can go ahead and fry.

Well. I hope for Gore's sake that his ego is sufficiently inflated so that when AGW hysteria falls completely on its ass, he doesn't implode publicly. Actually, for my sake. Schadenfreude aside, I really don't want to watch that.

Actually, garage, I think Al Gore is a huge liability to the AGW movement and has been for some time, for the reasons Freeman Hunt points out. He is an appalling, shameless hypocrite. The regime he imagines for the rest of us is that we will be forced one way or another to cut way back on our energy use while he and anyone in his circle won't experience a scintilla of change in their lavish lifestyles. He has reminded me for years of the old Soviet leadership, the nomenklatura whose wives were able to shop for furs and jewelry in special stores just for them while preaching the sacrifices of social justice to the masses.

It's not just the right that is rejecting the AGW notions, you know. You've lost independents. You've lost a substantional number of Democrats. The EPA's high-handed rush to impose carbon caps on its own authority when the matter is still before Congress will not end well for the Administration or for the issue in light of the CRU information. Before the 2010 elections, I predict a humiliating reversal of the order by Obama in response to desperate demands from Midwestern senators and congressmembers who thought their jobs were safe and find themselves losing by 20 points thanks to being swiftboated by ads linking them to the EPA's decision.

So enjoy your poem, and enjoy "the right's" mockery of Al Gore's pretentious windbaggery. You'll want to bank those laughs, I suspect.

Gore needs to be sued for suppressing CO2 production at the time that Global Freezing is appearing everywhere. Doesn't Gore take the science seriously that"proves" from tree rings that CO2 warms the Globe? Well, where is my warming when I need it? Gore stole it by suppressing the wonderful remedy of CO2 emissions.

With Stalin, it's always hard to get past his moustache. Here's a photo of young Josef that bears a resemblance to our wannabe prophet. I think it's the particular arch of the eyebrow that is most uncanny.

I realize the belief that lemmings commit mass suicide is myth, still, it's a compelling visual, and if to this day with a straight face the myth can be invoked of an ostrich sticking its head in the sand, which they don't, then I can invoke the visual of Gore as shepherd to lemmings. For amusement purposes only, of course.

Those who can summon the will to believe in the beauty of Gore's poetry can summon the faith to believe in the science of global warming. Seldom has the harmony of truth and beauty been more fully demonstrated than in this grand poem. This harmony could reach another dimension of perfection if Obama with his magnificent rhetorical skills could be persuaded to deliver this poem as his opening address to the Copenhagen meeting. I feel certain that the acid sea would recede--perhaps even part-- and that out rootless continent would be grounded if this incantation were chanted by Obama. These are the words, and Obama is the one.

From a purely logical standpoint, I never could understand the embrace of an individual who to my knowledge, has zero background in the sciences, as the pointguard for AGW. Then I remind myself that celebrity is as celebrity does. Paris Hilton was a nobody until she made a homemade porn video and evidently Al Gore felt this also could be his ticket to stardom since that President thing didn't work out for him.

At this stage of the climate data scandal, listening to Al Gore and company trying to defend the fraud they tried to foist upon us is the equivalent fundamentalists trying to convince me the Earth was created in six days.

He has reminded me for years of the old Soviet leadership, the nomenklatura whose wives were able to shop for furs and jewelry in special stores just for them while preaching the sacrifices of social justice to the masses.

This is like the chickenhawk argument, yes? You have to be dirt poor to advocate for the poor, you must walk across the country instead of fly if you trust thermometers....I noticed it only applies to liberals though. Tell a right winger he must actually fight or fund futile adventurism overseas instead of his keyboard and why, why that's WORSE than the Holocaust! The right is full of deferments and anal cysts when their number was called.....but that's DIFFERENT. In 30 yrs Rush Limbaugh will be broadcasting from somewhere in the rockies not underwater blaming it all on liberals.....perfect feedback loop.

This is like the chickenhawk argument, yes? You have to be dirt poor to advocate for the poor, you must walk across the country instead of fly if you trust thermometers....I noticed it only applies to liberals though. Tell a right winger he must actually fight or fund futile adventurism overseas instead of his keyboard and why, why that's WORSE than the Holocaust!

The key difference is that individual behaviour contributes to global warming. It doesn't contribute to the threat of nuclear proliferation or third world tyranny. Unless you're, like, A.Q. Khan or something.

For my blogging dollar, it doesn't get any better than commentators referring to Algore as ManBearPig. South Park is a guilty pleasure. Well-written and well-executed South Park sometimes borders on pure genius.

The key difference is that individual behaviour contributes to global warming. It doesn't contribute to the threat of nuclear proliferation or third world tyranny. Unless you're, like, A.Q. Khan or something.

But if Muslims are worse than the Nazis and want to force your wife to wear a burka, shouldn't you be doing more than yapping on the sidelines? Or are right wingers just that weak that they won't defend their families. Eek!

Plus or minus 9 percent isn't exactly an accurate reading of temperature. And to think some of the modern thermometers have margins of error of 3 to 5 degrees. Yikes!

So that means, if I use the 3 degree margin, it is either 5 degrees or 11 degrees outside right now. Either way, it is freaking cold. Where the HELL is this global warming they keep promising??

You have to be dirt poor to advocate for the poor, you must walk across the country instead of fly if you trust thermometers..

Not exactly. But you don't have to be a huge hypocrite and make ZERO effort to cut back yourself and set an example. Ed Beggly may be a deluded green fanatic, but at least he walks the walk.

When the rest of these Priests of Gaia also walk the walk, instead of increasing their conspicuous consumption, people might pay them some respect. In the meantime, it is obvious that they feel that the sacrifices don't include themselves.

This is like the chickenhawk argument, yes? You have to be dirt poor to advocate for the poor, you must walk across the country instead of fly

No. You don't have to be poor to advocate for the poor but it certainly helps your cause if you're actually doing something for the poor in addition to telling everyone else to do something for the poor.

Tell a right winger he must actually fight or fund futile adventurism overseas instead of his keyboard

I too wish for the day when terrorism is a reduced to a mere nuisance. Or as our cousins across the pond would say, 'an acceptable level of violence'.

"This is like the chickenhawk argument, yes? You have to be dirt poor to advocate for the poor, you must walk across the country instead of fly if you trust thermometers...."

No it is completely different. Being poor is not a volitional act that does harm to yourself or others. For that reason, being poor is not like emitting CO2. Al Gore is claiming that emitting CO2 is a bad thing. And then he is living a life of such extravagance that he emits more CO2 than some small nations. This is the equivalent of campaigning against the evils of gambling while running up a $40 million tab at Harrahs. Or Carrie Nation drinking a bottle of Jack Denials a day.

When you campaign to help the poor, you are campaigning to end an evil. You are not perpetuating that evil by being rich. In contrast, Al Gore is increasing the evil of CO2 through his lifestyle.

Just like you would be skeptical of the person who losses millions at a casino claiming that gambling is bad, we should also be skeptical of the person who flies on private jets claiming that CO2 is bad. In the end, they are both probably scam artists who don't believe what they say and are counting on our ignorance, which in your case is probably not a bad bet.

No. You don't have to be poor to advocate for the poor but it certainly helps your cause if you're actually doing something for the poor in addition to telling everyone else to do something for the poor.

Somebody needs to hook up poor Al with Amory Lovins for an enviro-makeover.

But if Muslims are worse than the Nazis and want to force your wife to wear a burka, shouldn't you be doing more than yapping on the sidelines?

Even if people believed your ridiculous caricature of right-wing opinion . . . Why? There's no actual logical connection there between your precondition (Muslims = Evil Nazis) and your conclusion. Particularly given that we already have a professional military. It would be like saying that because I think firefighting is a good thing, and people should fight fires, therefore I must become a firefighter rather than simply expressing the general view that firefighting is a good thing, and maybe donating to the firemens' associations. It's sheer idiocy. On the other hand, if I believe firefighting is a good thing, you would have me dead to rights if my weekend hobby turned out to be arson. That's the difference right there.

Balefegor - Your 12:37 post was excellent. You captured the idiocy of those that insist any support of anything must be personally experiential or it is "invalidated".

To me, I never liked Algores' smug certainty about things he was unqualified to preach about, then discovery he is nothing but a glorified stock pump and dumper who would have had the SEC all over him if he was in a publicly traded company rather than safe in the VC and Hedge Fund ranks.

I think Obama's ridiculous Peace Prize has also prompted a lot of independently minded people to question the merit of Algore getting one, as well as an Oscar, for a highly misleading movie and various gloom and doom lectures from lines his Green MOvement handlers feed him.

This is like the chickenhawk argument, yes? You have to be dirt poor to advocate for the poor, you must walk across the country instead of fly if you trust thermometers.

No. Many of what you call chickenhawks are people who chose not to join, could not join or deliberately avoided the military at one point of their lives, but at a subsequent point evolved a different viewpoint, either leaving behind their past anti-military view or developing a greater appreciation for national security as a priority. At that point, perhaps they were too old for military service, but their change of mind and public advocacy nonetheless opened them to an unfair charge of hypocrisy. The only way to cure it would be to back in time to when they were 18-25 and enlist. Not a possibility if you are, say, 50.

In Gore's case, there is nothing preventing him from adapting the lifestyle popularized by Ed Begley Jr. He makes a choice every day not to do so. He associates with a set of people who are also given that choice and choose not to do so. That in itself is damaging to the environmental cause, because green industry (like high-tech) depends on early adopters who can afford to buy expensive solar power, water recycling and other state-of-the-art resource conservation systems, permitting their testing, debugging and reduction of the cost curve. But it is also a slap in the face to those he lectures about profligacy. Indeed Gore wishes to be the shepherd, but he wants to lead the sheep from safe inside a climate-controlled Range Rover rather than out there on the meadow where it gets hot and cold, windy and rainy and where you can get bitten by bugs or trip over rocks.

What it suggests to me is that what he really is calling for is a change in the form of governance. He doesn't give a shit about individual responsibility for the environment. The real game is, who gets to control the levers of government and through government, industry and individual lives. Even under an environmental regime, a man given such power and responsibility can't be expected to live like the rest of us! And that was the logic of the nomeklatura as well. Brezhnev needed a respite from his struggles on behalf of the revolution, and nothing says respite like a plate full of caviar and a chilled bottle of champagne inside a warm palace.

All I'd like to add is Jerry Orbach singing Try to Remember where the lyrics seem to me to be rather on point.

Try to remember the kind of SeptemberWhen life was slow and oh, so mellow.Try to remember the kind of SeptemberWhen grass was green and grain was yellow.Try to remember the kind of SeptemberWhen you were a tender and callow fellow.Try to remember, and if you remember,Then follow.

Try to remember when life was so tenderThat no one wept except the willow.Try to remember when life was so tenderThat dreams were kept beside your pillow.Try to remember when life was so tenderThat love was an ember about to billow.Try to remember, and if you remember,Then follow.

Deep in December, it's nice to remember,Although you know the snow will follow.Deep in December, it's nice to remember,Without a hurt the heart is hollow.Deep in December, it's nice to remember,The fire of September that made us mellow.Deep in December, our hearts should rememberAnd follow.

There is a rotten smell indeed in Denmark from whence the demanded tribute of Danegeld is arising as we speak. The raiders of the world's economy for a threat of imaginary disaster should all be arrested for Criminal Conspiracy to Defraud.

There are always multiple, plausible, and totally justifiable reasons for conservatives to escape the hypocrite tag when they seemingly do things diametrically opposed to what they espouse. Got it. They can change, and evolve! They can even drive green cars and conserve energy without being labeled religious zealots who worship at altars. It's so easy being a conservative.

"So emitting CO2 is evil then? Then AGW is true if Al Gore is a hypocrite. Can't have it both ways"!

Garage you inability to grasp basic logic never fails to astound me. You really are the dumbest poster on the internet and by a wide margin. Al Gore claims that emmitting Co2 is bad. Yet he is living a lifestyle that does just that and is doing nothing to stop it. That makes him a hypocrite by his own terms. The truth or falsity of his claims, have nothing to do with it.

I guess it is because you are a liberal and are around stupid people all the time. Maybe I should cut you more slack.

Obviously, it's not evil, since every time you exhale, that's what you do.

But incredibly profligate consumption of energy, while not evil, can be as appalling as profligate consumption of money or food. Gluttony is one of the seven deadlies, no? Al Gore is inarguably an energy glutton.

But we're pissing in the wind here. garage's hero is not to be criticized. It's like criticizing the environment. Al Gore is like a bird in flight, like a moonrise over Yosemite, like the sound a river makes. Lo! It is the very sound of Gaia.

"Once to every man and nation,comes the moment to decide,in the strife of truth with falsehood,for the good or evil side;some great cause, some great decision,offering each the bloom or blight,and the choice goes by forever,'twixt that darkness and that light."

Yes. People's attitudes and belief systems change and evolve. Atheists become believers and believers become atheists. Its all part of that crazy dynamic that is human nature. Few people maintain the same beliefs at age fifty that they held at age twenty laregly due to the maturing process. I'm not certain when Al Gore became a believer in AGW and mankind's deleterious impact on planet Earth but suffice it to say that his lifestyle certainly isn't keeping pace with his apparent beliefs.

There are always multiple, plausible, and totally justifiable reasons for conservatives to escape the hypocrite tag when they seemingly do things diametrically opposed to what they espouse.

You have to be willfully blind to the news every day to believe this.

If a social conservative turns out to be an adulterer or gay, his or her public career is finished. You'd need a book to list all the examples.

Businesses that preach free-markets but lobby government for corporate welfare on their own behalf are excoriated.

Bush and before him Quayle never stopped having to deal with the story that they avoided Vietnam by serving in the National Guard. A more intelligent forgery of a letter purporting to show Bush's military weaseling would have ended his presidency after one term.

Rush Limbaugh -- who on the left ever resists calling him a pill-popper, drug addict, etc.? Most of what is thrown at Sarah Palin are charges of hypocrisy -- claiming to be against earmarks while seeking them, claiming to be a guardian of taxpayers' money while racking up big per diem costs for living in her own house.

And that's life the big city, for anyone of any political persuasion. No, it's Gore's fans who demand a special exemption.

Thing is, it's never been properly explained. My nomenklatura metaphor is just that, a metaphor. No one has actually made the Brezhnev argument on Gore's behalf sincerely. So, garage, do you want to explain why it's okay that Gore burns up so much energy? I'm ready to listen.

Put another way, while I disagree that man is causing global warming, I have a lot more respect for Ed Begley Jr. who at least sets an example. You would think the AGW crowd would hitch their wagon to him rather than someone whose carbon footprint resembles a yeti.

The Gore is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to bow down to green movements: he leadeth me beside the federal waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for the Earth's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley instead of driving my car, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy charts and thy graphs they comfort me. Thou preparest a table of figures before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou weanest me off of thy oil; my car runneth never. Surely greenness and hypocracy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Gore for ever.

The Earth is the Gore's, and the warmness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For he hath studied it upon the seas, and established it certain the floods.

Lift up your heads, O ye ingrates; even lift them up, ye everlasting boors; and the Failed Vice President of Glory shall come in. Who is this Failed Vice President of Failed Vice Presidents? the Gore of beltway toasts, he is the Failed Vice President of Glory.

So, garage, do you want to explain why it's okay that Gore burns up so much energy? I'm ready to listen.

I guess we would need to come up with what is "acceptable" use of consumption for Al Gore. For instance, do we count Al Gore's weight on a jet already fueled and ready for a flight to Copenhagen to give a speech? How much fuel would the plane have used without him on it? Or does he still have to walk to Long Island and row by hand across the Atlantic?

"I guess we would need to come up with what is "acceptable" use of consumption for Al Gore. For instance, do we count Al Gore's weight on a jet already fueled and ready for a flight to Copenhagen to give a speech? How much fuel would the plane have used without him on it? Or does he still have to walk to Long Island and row by hand across the Atlantic?"

He could not take a private jet but fly commercial. If he were serious, he could deliver a speech via sattilite and avoid the trip all together. He could live in a merely large house rather than the compound he does live in. He could choose to just make a few million rather than tens of millions off of his climate scam. In short, he could live a life more like Ed Begley Jr., although less obsessively.

He does none of that stuff because he doesn't believe a word of what he is saying or he doesn't care. He is in this for fame and money. His actions speak much louder than his words. He is nothing but a 21st Century Elmer Gantry.

If AGW is a problem, let's get grim and scientific and find a way to solve it.

No one has a serious plan that solves the problem they say exists. We have a lot of people pushing technologies that cannot meet our growing energy needs. We have some people demanding we impoverish ourselves to lower emissions. We have very few dealing with the reality that most emissions growth will be in the non-western world.

There's a real disconnect between problem and solution. Most solutions are really how people can show solidarity with the cause, not anything that will show results. So we're supposed to buy sweaters and shitty light bulbs.

A solution would be replacing fossil fuels with something that could actually provide the energy we need to grow. The West isn't going to consign itself to poverty and voluntarily become a third world socialist paradise.

Solar and wind will never, ever do it. Serious people can't believe those technologies will work, because there isn't enough wind to provide what we need, and there isn't enough sun hitting the United states. It's dark half the time and the wind doesn't always blow. Electricity needs to be used when it is produced because we don't have the battery technology to store it in mass amounts. I wish people could acknowledge these simple facts.

Instead, we get a lot of verbiage that has nothing to do with actually fixing the problem presented.

I guess we would need to come up with what is "acceptable" use of consumption for Al Gore.

Clearly that is what the Copenhagen summit is all about; establishing a cap on how much carbon we are allowed to emit. Going on the assumption you're an American citizen living in the country, how much are you prepared to pay or otherwise sacrifice in terms of how high your thermostat can be or whether you should be drivng a Prius over a Escalade?

Clearly this is probably not something that worries someone who receives $50K - $100K per speech but I suspect other 95% of the nation who actually have to work for a living might not be so amenable.

I guess we would need to come up with what is "acceptable" use of consumption for Al Gore.

Or, an acceptable margin above Ed Begley, Jr.

Begley is comfortable but far from wealthy. Gore is very wealthy and thus could afford do invest in state-of-the-art conservation and alternative energy products to a greater extent than Begley.

So, why doesn't he?

I'm sure if he paid Begley's airfare (commercial, not private), he'd be happy to come out and do an energy audit of Gore's house. He might have an expert he could bring with him, which would cost a little more, but I'm guessing for a figure south of $5K, Gore could get a roadmap to Begley's lifestyle.

Begley's also got a book out called "Living Like Ed." I don't know if it's on Al's Amazon wish list, but I'm sure if we all chipped in, we could get it for him for Christmas, erhm, the holidays.

One thing Al could definitely benefit from is Begley's penchant for bicycling. Begley's in magnificent shape. He's only a year younger than Gore but looks 10 years younger.

John Lynch...You said that "The West is not going to consign itself to poverty and voluntarily become a third world socialist paradise." Someone needs to tell Obama and Gore quickly that we will not drink their Copenhagen cool aide. The listing of CO2 from "fossil fuels" as evils instead of as readily available resources is a falsehood placed into weak minds to control the outcome of rational thinking on the subject. The Creationist's young earth theory is unsupported except by faith in a misreading of scripture and is 100% wrong; and likewise the theory that using of our abundant Fossil Fuels is evil is 100% wrong.